Since 1999, Claude Lanzmann has made several films that could be considered satellites of SHOAH, comprised of interviews conducted in the 1970’s that didn’t make it into the final, monumental work. He has just completed a series of four new films, built around four women from different areas of Eastern Europe, each finding herself unexpectedly and improbably alive after war’s end: Ruth Elias from Ostravia; Paula Biren from Lodz; Ada Lichtman from Krakow; and Hannah Marton from Cluj.
“What they have in common,” writes Lanzmann, “apart from the specific horrors each one of them was subjected to, is their intelligence, an incisive, sharp and carnal intelligence that rejects all pretence and false reasons – in a word: idealism.” What is so remarkable about Lanzmann’s films is the way that they stay within the immediate present tense, where the absolute horror of the Shoah is always happening. (Eric King)